Lady Antebellum looks future in the eye

A sandwich tray littered with disheveled cold cuts is the center of attention as Lady Antebellum wraps up a long day of interviews at Great American Country’s studios on Music Row. Running on adrenaline and motivated by the desire to get comfortable, Hillary Scott, Dave Haywood and Charles Kelley scatter, mouths full, to different rooms. Scott wants to change clothes; Kelley and Haywood can’t wait to wash the make-up off their faces.

When the three reassemble in the sitting area, they have less than 20 minutes left before time to leave for the airport.

The pacing of the interview mimicked their career path: full steam ahead.

Two and a half years ago, Lady Antebellum had just signed their record deal with Capitol Records Nashville, a decision the band calls the best one they’ve ever made. Since then, their self-titled debut has gone platinum, and they've earned multiple country music industry awards, including upsetting Rascal Flatts in the group of the year category at November’s CMA Awards.

Lady Antebellum has logged two No. 1 singles: “I Run To You” and five-week chart topper “Need You Now,” which they will play on Sunday night’s Grammy Awards show. On Grammy night, the members of Lady Antebellum will also find out if they won either of the trophies for which they were nominated. (“I Run To You” is nominated for best country song, and the band is up for best country performance by a duo or group.)

And on Tuesday the trio released their second album, Need You Now, which contains the aforementioned title track and the current single, “American Honey.”
“A lot of songs carry similar themes to the last record,” Kelley said of the new album, which the band helped produce. “We try to write about what we know, and right now I’m in a great place from a relationship standpoint. I just got married. And there’s some heartbreak on the CD.”

“Most of that is mine,” Scott said.

“That’s the great thing about having three perspectives,” Kelley continued. “It’s balanced . . . . We feel like we challenged ourselves, too. We said, ‘Let’s step back’ and ‘Where is the journey going to go?’ and ‘How is it going to travel sonically?”

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But Need You Now also covers new subject matter for the trio. The band said they chose to record and release “American Honey” as a single because the song had a nostalgic quality unlike anything they had previously done.

“There’s a line in it, ‘You get caught up in this crazy life, trying to be everything it will make you lose your mind,’ and that’s us,” Kelley said of the song, which was written by Shane Stevens, Cary Barlowe and Hillary Lindsey. “We’re trying to live up to these expectations and do this. And you’re like, ‘Man it would be nice to have no responsibilities and nowhere to have to be.’ We wouldn’t trade this for the world, though.”

Members chose the traditional pop flavored “Hello World” because they felt it was a “complete left turn” from what was expected of them.

“We want people to know we are going to grow and change as people and so is our sound,” Kelley said.

But it’s the single “Need You Now” that Wade Jessen, senior chart manager, Nashville Billboard/e5 Global Media, thinks is going to continue to attract music fans to the group.

“‘Need You Now’ is a record that everybody can relate to and is passionate about,” Jessen said. “What we are seeing is a perfect storm of what really great country music does when it does its job well. It’s a great package. There are people that are buying that song that might not care about country music, and that’s a good problem to have.”

Kelley said the band always thought that fans could relate to the desperation in “Need You Now,” as former lovers pine for each other in the night. But they never thought it would “resonate to the extent that it has,” he said.

The fan response to the rest of the songs on the new CD, Jessen said, could dictate the extent of the trio’s future in country music.

“At this stage of their career, (how long it lasts) is pretty much up to (the band),” Jessen said. “It’s going to be determined as much by what they don’t do as what they do. If they establish an expectation among their fan base, the expectation is that they are going to continue to deliver, for a certain amount of time, music that fans expect. Country music fans are going to want more things like ‘I Run To You’ and ‘Need You Now’ and if that’s the expectation then I think that’s going to be a lot of pressure to deliver.”

Right now it seems the three members of Lady Antebellum are putting most of the pressure on themselves.

They admit to being nervous about performing at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, Jan. 31 and members said they are anxious about their two nominations.

“It’s a big honor for us to be mentioned in those nominations along with people like Brooks & Dunn,” Kelley said. “It’s going to be a special night.”

As for the year ahead, Kelley said the band “wants to reach as many people as possible.” Both he and Scott hope that includes their peers.

“We look up to these musicians,” Kelley said. “I really do care what George Strait thinks of us. I care what Reba thinks. I want Keith Urban to listen to our record and come up and say, ‘What a song.’ We want that stamp of approval from the superstars saying we’re representing this genre well because they know it better than we know it. And, we want to play stadiums.”